For never winning a Daytona 500, Toyota could have easily swept the top-five in Sunday’s Great American Race if it weren’t for Matt Kenseth losing the lead on the final lap and hitting the wall.
Toyota’s race cars were so good that only 0.01 seconds separated Denny Hamlin and his Joe Gibbs Racing pseudo teammate Martin Truex Jr. in the closest finish in Daytona 500 history.
Kyle Busch, who won NASCAR’s final race of 2015 along with the Cup championship, finished Sunday’s race in third while Carl Edwards was fifth despite going a lap down earlier in the race and slamming into the wall in an accident with Brian Vickers and Trevor Bayne. Although Edwards’ front right was covered in race tape, he was able to slice and dice his way through the field, a testament to how fast Joe Gibbs’ cars were.
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Despite starting the race in backup cars, Kenseth and Truex bumped and drafted their way to the front, using each other to create momentum until they caught up with Busch, Edwards and Hamlin. For the second half of the race, the foursome of Truex, Busch, Hamlin and Kenseth protected Toyota’s lead, working together to lead 156 of the 200 laps.
“It is hard because I am competing against a bunch of other cars that aren’t my teammates or manufacturer,” said Ford driver Joey Logano, who finished sixth. “You are on you own out there. It makes it very challenging for sure. The Toyota group were really good today. They were working together better than anybody and they had the fastest cars and they deserved to win the race.”
Like a true team, Joe Gibbs and Truex had a plan to work together heading into the race, promising not to wreck each other when racing for the win.
“The last thing I wanted to do was wreck off turn four with my Toyota teammates and none of us win," Hamlin told Fox Sports after the race. “We had talked about a plan overnight to just work together, work together and I’ve never seen it executed so flawlessly as what we did today.
“This is a team victory. My teammates did an amazing job all day working together — all the Toyotas. This is a proud moment for everyone at Toyota. This wouldn’t be possible if this wasn’t Toyotas sticking together all race long. We were able to get up, capture our track position.”
Busch added: “It just shows that when you have a game plan and you work together and you stick together, it works for you. A lot of the other teams, they may come up with a game plan and they do this and they do that, but sometimes those game plans they fall off and those guys — you don’t stick together.
“That’s probably the longest and the best I think our JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) cars have ever worked together and it certainly showed.”
Toyota has come a long way since entering NASCAR Sprint Cup in 2007 but the Toyota Racing Development along with Joe Gibbs Racing has arguably put Toyota as the top manufacturer in NASCAR. So much so that Truex decided to join from Chevrolet this past offseason looking for the success JGR experienced in 2015 when each driver won at least two races and combined for 14 victories.
Now as the Sprint Cup heads to Atlanta for the first low-downforce race of the 2016 season, Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing and quasi-teammate Truex could very well be headed for another victory.
Last season at Kentucky and Darlington when NASCAR tested the low-downforce package that places maneuvering more in the hands of drivers than the engineers in the shop, JGR won both events with Busch and Edwards, respectively. The team averaged an amazing 5.63 finish.
